Financial thoughts

San Antonio area cable companies are gearing up for 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Starting Friday, Time Warner Cable and GVTC Communications will offer content from NBC Universal’s 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games.

The cable companies will show more than 835 hours of programming, the most ever for a Winter Olympics.

The games will be played between Feb. 12-28. On Time Warner Cable, NBC Universal will air a number of events on Sports On Demand Channel 950 and in HD on Showcase on Demand Channel 101.

Time Warner customers who are watching the Olympics on WOAI-TV will be able to press select on their remote when they see a Start Over prompt to restart a program in progress ay day loans.

Separately, GVTC customers also will have access to more than 1,200 hours of free online video content from the games not available on television. Subscribers will be able to visit MyGVTC.com and sign in with their GVTC e-mail account to access the content.

Also half the content will be exclusive online video unavailable on NBC and affiliate networks CNBC, MSNBC, USA and Universal HD.

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DETROIT—General Motors Co. chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre Jr., who said Monday he’ll stay on as head of the automaker for the time being, has reaffirmed that GM will repay in full the loans it got from the U.S. and Canadian governments by June.

Whitacre said GM’s board asked him last week to take on the position of chief executive permanently, ending a seven-week search for a new CEO.

“The board looked at the potential candidates and decided this place needs stability. We don’t need any more uncertainty,” Whitacre told reporters at a hastily called news conference at GM’s Detroit headquarters.

Whitacre also said GM will repay its $8.1 billion (U.S.) in loans from the U.S., Canadian and Ontario governments all at once and could pay them even earlier than June. The automaker owes $1.4 billion to the Canadian and Ontario governments, and has so far repaid $192 million.

Whitacre, 68, is a former CEO of telecommunications giant AT&T Inc.

He has been serving as interim CEO at GM since the board ousted former chief executive Fritz Henderson on Dec. 1. GM had hired a firm to conduct a global search for a successor.

Although GM had hired the search firm, there were strong signs that Whitacre would take the job permanently, or at least serve as CEO until the company is on solid enough ground to sell stock to the public in an effort to repay its government loans.

Whitacre wouldn’t name any candidates the board had considered. He said he intends to stay two or three years, or “long enough to get it done.”

Whitacre said he hadn’t planned to become CEO when he was named chairman, but feels comfortable at the company and knows what changes need to be made.

“I think this company is good for America. I think America needs this,” he said.

Whitacre often says in a folksy Texas drawl that he knows little about cars. But he’s already shaken up the company by hiring a new chief financial officer and transferring the old one to China, firing the Chevrolet and Buick-GMC brand managers, combining sales and marketing and consolidating control of GM’s core North American market under one executive no fax payday loans.

He also seems impatient to spur the plodding culture of GM, where decision by committee, an isolated upper management and fear of risk produced mediocre cars for years. He wants to increase GM’s sales and market share while shifting the company’s focus to cars from trucks.

Whitacre also confirmed Monday that Dutch luxury car maker Spyker Cars NV is still in talks with GM to buy its ailing Saab brand, but no deal has been reached.

Whitacre said GM is in “advanced talks” with Spyker but continues to wind down Saab’s operations.

“We do not have a deal to announce this morning,” he said.

GM spokesman Chris Preuss in Detroit would not say if the company is close to a deal with Spyker.

GM and Spyker negotiated through the weekend trying to work out a deal to save Saab, which GM has decided to jettison as part of its restructuring plan to focus on four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC.

Swedish media reported that a deal was close, but Preuss said nothing had been finalized as of Monday afternoon in Sweden.

A deal for Spyker to buy Saab by itself is unlikely: Spyker sold 23 cars in the first half of 2009, its most recent reporting period, and it posted a net loss of 8.7 million euros. The six-year-old company has yet to make a profit, but it says funding for its operations has been guaranteed through 2010.

Money for a deal to buy Saab could come from Spyker’s largest shareholder, Russia’s Conversbank Financial Group, or other shareholders. It would also likely involve a large loan from the European Investment Bank, backed by the government of Sweden.

Saab Automobile sold around 90,000 cars in 2008, a 30 per cent decline from 2007. With another sharp sales decline expected, it filed for protection from creditors while it reorganized in February 2009. GM said at the time it expected to sell Saab and take $1 billion in losses.

GM filed for bankruptcy itself in June. Its attempts to sell Saab by a Dec. 31 deadline failed.

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It seems that consumers blinked this holiday season.

Rather than bet on heavy post-Christmas discounts, holiday shoppers loosened their purse strings a bit and spent a little more this season, according to data released Monday, giving merchants some reason for cheer.

Spending rose 3.6 percent in November and December, according to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, which estimates all forms of payment including cash. Adjusted for an extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the number was closer to a 1 percent rise. That was still better than the flat sales analysts had predicted.

The spending bounce means retailers managed to avoid a repeat of last year’s disaster even amid tight credit and double-digit unemployment. Profits should be healthier, too, because stores had a year to plan their inventories to match consumer demand and never needed to resort to fire sale clearances.

However, improved pricing and tighter inventories also means a tougher time for after-Christmas shoppers. The discount pickings were slimmer in many stores, while deep discounts were often limited to slow-moving items.

"It may be 70 percent off, but is it anything you want to buy?" asked Robert Buchanan, an assistant professor of finance at St. Louis University. "Nobody has any inventory."

Buchanan said he noticed low inventories over the weekend in some lines of goods at many stores at West County Mall in Des Peres, and at St. Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights, plus at Kohl’s in Crestwood, and Costco and Target stores in south St. Louis County.

"Almost without exception, inventories were light," he said.

It was a complaint shared by many local shoppers Saturday, when consumers began searching for the after-Christmas sales.

Shoppers looking for big sales should act quickly because there are relatively few leftovers to clear out.

"Retailers are much more nimble this year," said Marshal Cohen, an analyst at Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research firm NPD. "Their ‘Plan B’ is to have new receipts at the ready."

Cohen said he noticed J. Crew and Coach were two that had restocked shelves with new items last week.

Improving consumer sentiment aided holiday sales of discretionary items, said David Schick, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore.

"Consumer sentiment for higher-income folks has been improving faster as of late," Schick told Bloomberg News on Monday. "That is driving some of the better spending coupled with the fact that we are comparing with a dramatic drop-off in the more discretionary categories last year."

At Mid Rivers Mall in St. Peters, however, the economy continues to weigh on visitors.

Jason Caimi, 27, and his wife, Jen, 26, of Elsberry, brought their daughter Addilynn, 2, to the mall Monday. But the couple weren’t looking for after-Christmas sales. They went to get out of the house and let her play.

The Caimis are teachers, and they said their financial situation has improved, largely because they aren’t using credit cards and have focused on paying off debt.

Frugality and paying only with cash played roles in their holiday shopping, too.

"We didn’t buy anything full price," Jen Caimi said. She added that pre-Christmas deals were better this year.

Meanwhile, Delores White, 50, of O’Fallon, Mo., came to the mall to return a few items that didn’t fit.

White said she feels less confident than before about the economy going forward, primarily because jobs remain difficult for people to find, she said. "Everything is pretty much at a standstill," she said. She hopes it will turn around, though.

"I’m praying on it," White said. "That’s all I can do for everybody’s sake."

Now, merchants are facing big hurdles to lure shoppers back in January amid lean inventories and what appear to be weak gift card sales. Gift card sales are recorded only when they are redeemed.

Stores count on a post-Christmas boost because of the growing importance of January on the retail sales calendar. Last year, the week after Christmas accounted for 15 percent of overall holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak, a research firm.

Retail consultant Burt P. Flickinger describes gift cards as "the lifeblood" of the post-Christmas season because shoppers typically spend more than the value of the cards. "Retailers with a disappointing December are going to need January to survive," Flickinger said. "Inventories are even too low for retailers."

A better picture of how retailers fared during the holiday will be known Jan. 7, when many report December sales.

Buchanan says that at least the first half of 2010 will be tough, if not fatal, for some stores.

"In this recession, in this continuing lethargic consumer economy, retailers are still under tremendous pressure," Buchanan said.

Those suffering the most could be "middle of the mall" specialty stores not near an anchor store, he said.

"Every one of those retailers at places like West County and the Galleria is paying high rent," Buchanan added. "Those specialty retailers have low margins for error."

Tim Bryant and Shane Anthony of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report. So did The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke got a rough going over from both his supporters and detractors at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday.

Even some of those who praised his actions during the financial troubles of the last two years, such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, balanced that support with arguments that the central bank should be stripped of some of its bank regulation powers due to its past failures of oversight.

While many Democrats on the banking panel joined Dodd in saying they would vote for another four-year term for Bernanke, some of the Republicans questioned whether they could support the chairman who was first appointed by President George W. Bush.

One long-time Bernanke critic Jim Bunning, R-Ky., said he was ready to do everything he could to block or delay the confirmation, joining a similar threat made late Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Socialist senator from Vermont who is among the 60 members of the Democratic caucus.

The threat of a filibuster by Sanders and Bunning, two senators with diametrically opposed views on most issues, shows the breadth of anger faced by Bernanke sparked by the Wall Street bailouts of the 15 months. A filibuster would mean that Bernanke would need to get at least 60 votes, rather than the simple majority of 51, in order to be confirmed.

And the questions by Dodd and others about the Fed’s continued role as a bank regulator raised questions about how Bernanke will be able to do his job if he is confirmed for another term, which is still widely expected.

Dodd said Bernanke and the Fed deserved credit for the steps taken in the financial crisis of a year earlier to stop the economic crisis from becoming significantly worse than it did.

"I believe you are the right leader for this moment in the nation’s economic history and I believe your reappointment sends the right signal to markets," Dodd said during his opening statement.

But the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, was far more critical of Bernanke in his opening statement, telling Bernanke "I fear now our trust and confidence (in the Federal Reserve) was misplaced."

"Not everything that went wrong depends on the system because that system also depends on the people who run it," he told Bernanke. "It’s those individuals who need to be accountable for their actions or their failure to act."

Still, despite the implication that he couldn’t support confirmation, Shelby did not say how he intended to vote.

Two of the Republicans on the committee, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Bob Corker of Tennessee, did praise Bernanke and said they would vote for his confirmation.

"The simple fact is if you hadn’t been there and been willing to take extraordinary action last fall and last winter and in early spring…it’s very likely we would be experiencing a depression or if not a depression then certainly a recession that is radically more severe," said Gregg.

The next step in Bernanke’s confirmation would be a vote by the committee, which has not yet been scheduled.

Corker said he is certain Bernanke will be confirmed, although he held out the possiblity that the full Senate might not vote on confirmation until it was done with debate about reforming financial regulation. But he said that under law, Bernanke would stay in the top job at the Fed, even if the confirmation vote did not occur before the end of his term as chairman on Jan. 31.

Fight over Fed’s future powers

But there was a lot of talk even from Bernanke’s supporters on the committee, both Democrat and Republican, about the need to limit the Fed’s role as part of an overhaul of financial regulation.

Dodd has proposed legislation that would strip much of the bank supervisory duties from the Fed, giving them instead to a newly created authority. He said it might be better if the Fed simply focuses on using monetary policy to support economic growth and fight inflation while maintaining a stable financial system.

Dodd also said the financial crisis is at least partly due to poor supervision of the banking sector by the Fed.

"I admire what you’ve done over the last two years," he said. "But we shouldn’t have had to go through what we did for the last two years had there been cops on the street, doing their jobs, telling us what was going on and allowing us to avoid the problems in the first place."

"Why should I give an institution that failed in that responsibility the kind of exclusive authority we’re talking about here?," Dodd asked no faxing payday loans.

Bernanke responded that the Fed could not have taken the steps that Dodd had praised to stabilize the financial system if it were stripped of its role as banking regulator.

"There’s no way we could have been as involved and effective in this crisis if we did not have that knowledge and expertise," he said.

Bernanke also opposed a proposal that recently passed the House Financial Services Committee to give the General Accountability Office power to audit the Fed’s monetary decisions, saying that it would be seen by investors as giving Congress the power to pressure the Fed to reverse or delay unpopular rate hikes.

He said if there are increased worries about Congressional interference in Fed activity, the central bank would not be able to stop real rates from rising because investors would demand higher yields on bonds.

Questioned by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, about the risk of a return of soaring inflation of the late 1970’s, and whether the Fed would have to raise rates to the record highs of that era to once again to conquer such runaway prices, Bernanke said he was confident there is not a risk of a return of such inflation.

But he added that the ability of the Fed to beat inflation at that time was a "case study" of why Congress should not audit monetary decisions of the Fed.

Mistakes were made

Bernanke admitted that the Fed made mistakes in supervising the banking system ahead of the financial crisis, and promised to do better. But he said that supervision is already improving, and that it would be a bad idea to strip the Fed of its powers.

"If you fight a battle and lose the battle, does that mean you never use the army again? You have to improve and fix the situation. You don’t have to necessarily eliminate the institution," he said in response to one of Shelby’s question. "We didn’t do a perfect job by any means, but I don’t think we stand out as having done a worst job than other regulators."

Bunning, the only member of the Senate to vote against Bernanke when he was first nominated to head the central bank four years ago, was again his harshest critic.

Bunning said Bernanke and previous chairman Alan Greenspan were responsible for helping to inflate the housing bubble whose bursting caused the housing crisis, and that the Fed continues to create more problems by pumping too much cheap money into the system.

At one point Bunning even slipped and referred to Bernanke as "Greenspan," prompting chuckles from both the chairman and his critic.

"You put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they used to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t get loans for their everyday needs," Bunning said. "Where I come from we punish failure, we don’t reward it."

He attacked Bernanke for the bailout of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) and a recent report from an inspector general that the Fed should not have paid 100% of the money owed by AIG to leading financial firms.

"The AIG bailout alone is reason enough to send you back to Princeton," Bunning said, referring to where Bernanke taught before entering government.

Dodd joined Bunning in his criticism of the Fed’s handling of those payments in the AIG bailout. Bernanke answered that he did not have the leverage to force those banks to accept lower payments, known as a "haircut," during those negotiations.

"The only way to get the haircut is to have a credible threat that if you don’t take the haircut they’re going to go bankrupt and you’re going to lose everything," he said in response to a question later in the hearing. "And since we had intervened to prevent AIG from going bankrupt, it just wasn’t credible."

Bernanke insisted that what was done to bailout Wall Street was done because of the impact further failures would have had on Main Street.

"I’m not a Wall Street person. I’m an academic. I come from a small town," he said. "I did it because I knew from my studies that the collapse of the financial system would have extraordinarily bad consequences for Main Street. And I firmly believe we did the right thing." 

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There’s no need to fear a Wall Street brain drain — despite the crackdown on pay by Washington.

On Thursday, White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg outlined compensation restrictions at seven firms that got special bailouts, and the Federal Reserve proposed to review pay practices at 28 unnamed giant banks.

Critics warn that reining in pay makes it hard to keep talented employees. Hemmed in, institutions like AIG (AIG, Fortune 500),Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) could lose their best people.

These firms would then perform even more abysmally, if that’s possible, leaving them hard pressed to repay tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-backed loans.

Still, we say Godspeed to this "talent." After all, the traders and suits in the corner offices don’t exactly have an unblemished track record. In 2008, Citigroup, BofA and Merrill Lynch (since acquired by BofA) posted a grand total of $51 billion in losses.

Yet even as they were running themselves into the ground, the firms managed to pay out more than $12 billion in bonuses — including 1,606 million-dollar-plus bonuses, according to a report from the New York attorney general’s office.

"Even a cursory examination of the data suggests that in these challenging economic times, compensation for bank employees has become unmoored from the banks’ financial performance," the report said.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine that defection-hit firms would have a lot of trouble finding qualified replacements in the current job market.

Unemployment has doubled nationally since December 2007, when the recession started. Securities industry employment has fallen 10% nationwide and 14% in New York from a mid-2008 peak, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, costing some 90,000 jobs in the U.S.

And Goldman Sachs’ (GS, Fortune 500) charm offensive notwithstanding, it looks like the official response to runaway pay is just starting.

The Fed’s plan to weigh big banks’ compensation plans against their potential for undermining the economy could eventually put pressure on pay at all the big banks.

"This could be a game changer," said Simon Johnson, an economist at MIT. "There will be a lot of pressure on them in Congress to stick it to the big firms."

But maybe the best reason not to fret about talent flight is one familiar to cubicle dwellers everywhere: just because someone has a big, high-paying job doesn’t mean they’re good at it.

Take Bank of America, for instance. The bank’s longtime CEO, Ken Lewis, unexpectedly announced his retirement this month, while agreeing to give back his 2009 salary.

Lewis didn’t say why he was leaving, but it seems that criticism over his empire building, mishandling of the Merrill acquisition and outsize pay got to him. The Charlotte Observer reported he had grown tired of the "mud being thrown on him day by day."

Another helping or two of that mud could be just what Wall Street needs. 

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Citigroup announced Friday it had struck a deal to sell its Phibro energy trading business to Occidental Petroleum, a move that will likely reduce scrutiny about the compensation of the division’s top trader.

While the New York City-based bank declined to disclose the terms of the deal, Occidental (OXY, Fortune 500) said its net investment would be about $250 million.

There had been speculation in recent weeks that Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) was actively shopping the unit in an effort to deflect any potential political anger over a potential $100 million payday for its star trader Andrew Hall.

Citigroup, as well as other banks that were bailed out by the U.S. government on more than one occasion last year, are currently having pay packages of its top executives and most highly compensated employees reviewed by Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s so-called "pay czar instant payday loan no telecheck."

Occidental, whose business centers on oil and gas exploration and production, is not subject to government scrutiny over compensation. Still, the energy giant said Friday it would defer "significant portions" of any current or future bonuses generated within Phibro.

Hall and other members of Phibro’s management team will remain with Phibro after the acquisition is completed by the end of the year, Occidental said.

Phibro has been a profit machine for Citigroup recently, even as the bank has been hit by big losses tied to mortgages and other toxic assets. Over the past five years, the division averaged approximately $371 million in pre-tax earnings a year, according to Occidental. 

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Psst. Did you hear who Microsoft is going to buy next? No? Me neither. But that hasn’t stopped traders from gossiping.

Mergers are starting to make a comeback as the economy and stock market show signs of life. But there is a dark side to the pickup in deals. Takeover rumors with little to no basis in fact have also returned.

Last week, for example, Wall Street and Silicon Valley were awash with the rumor that Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) was in talks to buy video game publisher Electronic Arts (ERTS). Shares of EA spiked as much as 9.6% on the chatter.

A deal for EA wouldn’t have been preposterous. Microsoft, after all, has a big interest in gaming with its Xbox franchise, and EA has been frequently cited as a potential acquisition target in the past few years.

But the takeover talk turned out to be just that: talk. Microsoft spokespeople and executives quickly denied the rumors and EA’s stock took a hit as a result.

The Microsoft-EA "takeover" is just one example of investors getting their hopes up only to have them dashed.

Earlier this week, The New York Post reported that hedge fund wunderkind John Paulson, who made gobs of money last year shorting financial stocks and is now sifting through the rubble for bargains, was pushing to merge troubled small business lender CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500) with OneWestBank, the failed mortgage lender previously known as IndyMac. Paulson’s firm is an investor in CIT’s debt and was part of a group that bought IndyMac from the FDIC this year.

Shares of CIT unsurprisingly shot up on the "news." But this chatter also turned out to be untrue. Reuters later reported from an unnamed source that talk of an IndyMac-CIT merger was "just wrong."

CIT’s stock promptly sunk, plunging 45% Wednesday. It now appears that the company is considering a prepackaged bankruptcy. Ouch.

But neither of those bogus M&A stories can hold a candle to the curious case of big screen move theater operator IMAX.

On Wednesday morning, a press release began to float around the Internet saying that IMAX (IMAX) had agreed to be purchased by Walt Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) for $1.5 billion, a handsome premium.

IMAX’s stock rose more than 7% Tuesday and was up about 6% in pre-market trading Wednesday. So it seems that some investors believed the reports. But upon further inspection, there were some things that didn’t make sense.

While Disney does have an agreement with IMAX where several Disney films will be shown in IMAX theaters, an outright purchase of the company would not really fit Disney’s strategy. Plus, Disney just announced a few weeks ago that it was spending $4 billion to buy comic book publisher Marvel Entertainment.

Well guess what? The IMAX press release turned out to be a fake — and a bad one at that. It was a classic cut and paste job, with mentions of the Marvel deal scattered throughout.

Still, IMAX felt compelled to issue its own legitimate press release shortly after the market opened Wednesday to point out that it had not been acquired and was not in discussions to be bought by Disney lowest fee payday loans. IMAX’s stock was flat Wednesday but fell nearly 2% Thursday morning.

And pranksters struck again later Thursday. Shares of Local.com (LOCM), a relatively small fish in the world of online search, shot up 8% Thursday, with most of the gains coming in the last hour and a half of trading.

Apparently, the reason for the stock’s surge was a press release saying that the company had been acquired by Microsoft. Local.com put out a real press release Thursday night to say that this was not true. The stock fell more than 5% Friday morning.

Of course, not every fake merger will be a case of someone acting fraudulently and making something up out of thin air as was the case with the IMAX and Local.com rumors.

Is it possible that Microsoft and EA held talks about a deal at some point? Sure. But that’s not the same thing as having a signed merger agreement that’s going to be imminently announced. Just look at all the hullabaloo Thursday about Comcast and NBC Universal.

According to a story that surfaced Wednesday evening on TheWrap, a Web site focusing on the entertainment business, Comcast is in advanced discussions to purchase NBC Universal from General Electric for $35 billion.

Considering that the cable giant made a bold, unsolicited $54 billion takeover for Disney back in 2004, it’s not entirely shocking that Comcast would be interested in NBC Universal.

But a Comcast spokeswoman denied this later Wednesday night, saying that "the report that Comcast has a deal to purchase NBC Universal is inaccurate."

Other reports suggest that Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) is trying to purchase a stake in NBC Universal, not the whole thing. And the Comcast spokeswoman simply said that Comcast does not have a deal to purchase NBC Universal. So there probably is something to the notion that Comcast and GE (GE, Fortune 500) are talking. It just doesn’t seem as if Comcast is about to ink a deal to buy all of NBC Universal.

There will probably be many more stories and rumors of takeovers that are at best slightly off the mark, and at worst just flat-out wrong. It comes with the territory now that companies are showing a willingness to make deals again.

It just goes to show that investors need to be wary of believing everything they read and hear, lest they get burned.

Talkback: Should Comcast buy NBC? Share your comments below.

We want to hear about the most outrageous consumer rip offs and unbelievable price gouging that you’ve come across. E-mail your story to julianne.pepitone@turner.com and you could be part of an upcoming article. For the CNNMoney.com Comment Policy, click here.  

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If you’re a house hunter in Florida, prepare to haggle. The Sunshine State is the easiest place to negotiate a price cut on your new home.

Of the 25 cities with biggest median discounts in August, 14 of them were in Florida, according to a report released Thursday by Zillow.com.

But hurry, because negotiating a better deal is getting harder. Nationwide, buyers got a median discount of 3.3% — or $7,039 off the last listing price — on homes they purchased in July. But in June, the discount was 3.5%. Back in January, the median cut was worth 4.6%.

"The strong summer selling season in 2009 has led to a decreasing difference between the last listing price and final sale price, but most buyers are still getting some additional discount at selling time," said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist.

The city where sellers offered the deepest price cuts was Vero Beach, Fla. Buyers there negotiated prices down by 10 equifax free credit report.2%, a savings of $23,500.

Other Florida hot spots were Sarasota (8.2% discount), Naples (7.8%) and Daytona Beach (7.5%).

"The fact that many Florida markets are still showing comparatively higher differences between the last listing price and final sale price suggests that inventory levels are still relatively high, keeping considerable downward pressure on prices and encouraging buyers to seek large discounts off the listing price," said Humphries.

The dollar size of the discount was biggest in Stamford, Conn., where high home prices meant the median discount of 5.9% translated into $32,099. Naples, Fla., buyers got $27,233 off their purchases, and Atlantic City, N.J., buyers slashed what they paid by a median of $23,082. 

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Regional banks in Maryland, Minnesota and California were closed by regulators Friday, bringing the total number of failed banks this year to 84, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said.

Baltimore, Md.-based Bradford Bank, which operated nine branches, will reopen Monday as part of Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company.

M&T, which is based in Albany, N.Y., agreed to assume all of Bradford Bank’s $383 million in deposits and will purchase "essentially all" of its $452 million in assets, the FDIC said.

In Minnesota, the eight branches of Mainstreet Bank of Forest Lake will be taken over by Stillwater-based Central Bank.

Central will pay a premium of 0.1% to the FDIC for the failed bank’s $434 million in deposits and will purchase its $459 million in assets, the FDIC said.

Affinity Bank of Ventura, California, operated 10 branches which will be taken over by Pacific Western Bank.

Pacific Western will assume all of Affinity’s deposits of approximately $922 million and purchase its $1 billion in assets, according to the FDIC.

The combined cost of Friday’s closures to the FDIC is an estimated $446 million.

Access to funds. Customers of the failed banks will be able to access their money over the weekend by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks will continue to be processed, and borrowers should make their payments as usual, the FDIC said.

The FDIC, the federal agency that has protected bank deposits since the Great Depression, will guarantee account balances up to $250,000 payday loans. Qualified depositors of the failed banks will retain their FDIC coverage.

A bad year. With Friday’s closures, the number of banks shut this year is more than three times the number of banks that failed in 2008, and it’s the highest tally since 1992, when 181 banks failed.

The majority of this year’s failures have been small, regional banks that fell victim to losses on real estate and consumer loans as unemployment surged to a 25-year high. But there have also been a number of large institutions closed in 2009.

Last week, regulators in Texas closed Guaranty Bank, which had about $13 billion in assets and was the third-largest bank to fail this year. That came one week after Alabama-based Colonial BancGroup became the sixth-largest bank failure in U.S. history on Aug. 15.

The wave of failures is expected to continue, raising concerns about the size of the FDIC’s insurance fund.

The FDIC said Thursday that the number of institutions on its so-called "problem bank" list reached 416 in the most recent quarter — the highest level in 15 years.

The agency also reported that its trust fund decreased by $2.6 billion, or 20%, during the quarter to $10.4 billion.

Over the next five years, the FDIC expects roughly $70 billion in losses due to the failure of insured institutions.  

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Forget Madison Avenue’s claims about the cleaning power of household detergents. Steward Advanced Materials, a 30-employee company in Chattanooga, promises to mop up mercury, lead and even nuclear waste from soil and water.

Steward’s SAMMS compound (an acronym for "self-assembled monolayers on mesoporous supports") consists of nanoscale pores that lab technicians can tweak to make them absorb and bind to any toxin. The result: a harmless cornstarch-like compound that can be disposed of in any landfill, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"When it comes to removing industrial toxins, we don’t have great options," says EPA chemist Warren Layne. "But this stuff will do it."

SAMMS was invented in the early 1990s by Glen Fryxell and Shas Mattigod, researchers at a government lab in Richland, Wash. Problem was, they could produce it only in tiny batches.

Enter Steward, which visited the lab in 2005 for a presentation and left with exclusive manufacturing rights. As a demonstration, the company cleaned a 27-year-old 300-gallon tank of radioactive sludge at a government lab in Idaho.

The first SAMMS powder — Thiol-SAMMS, available now — tackles mercury, which is regulated by the EPA and 26 states. Steward also offers a number of customized solutions. One filters contaminated streams, while another is aimed at hospitals and dental offices. Industrial-scale versions are available for chemical plants, coal-fired power plants, mining operations and oil rigs. Compounds that remove arsenic, cadmium, copper, platinum and selenium are in the works; one version could someday remove gold and silver from ore.

Says Robert Jones, Steward’s former vice president of product development: "There is an almost unlimited number of potential applications."  

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